The Univ of Minnesota Loves Diversity

The University of Minnesota has a new booklet out articulating how much they love diversity. How much? They say "diversity" 230 times in 18 pages. As a local journalist noted about a different program at the U:

aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of "the American Dream" in order to obtain the recommendation for licensure required by the Minnesota Board of Teaching. Instead, teacher candidates must embrace -- and be prepared to teach our state's kids -- the task force's own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic.

It seems like the essence of a higher education is diversity, not of thought, but of human subgroups based on ethnicity, religion, race, and sex.

Tolerance of diversity is has morphed into celebration, and in the process took something salutary and turned into something destructive. Some think diversity encourages the active and complex kind of thinking because it puts students in uncomfortable situations, but diversity is usually the most scripted and routine parts of their education, because for decades now, the diversity agenda has taught them all the safe answers to their smarmy questions.

Equating group disparities with racism on the part of the more successful group guarantees mutual resentment. As overt discrimination fades, still large racial disparities in success leads African Americans to conclude that racism is not only pervasive but also insidious because it is so unobservable and unconscious. Whites resent that nonfalsifiable accusation and the demands to feel guilty, if not directly compensate, African Americans for harm they do not believe they caused.

Once we encountered the world’s diversity with prejudice, disgust, erotic excitement, pity-—but also curiosity. Now we look at it incoherently, as both vastly important (in explaining inequality) and utterly irrelevant (in explaining fundamental differences between races). Such nonsense quickly instills in one an incurious attitude towards diversity in order to avoid offense and nonsense. Ask a professor why black sprinters dominate the 100 meters, and you'll often here something silly and a quick change of the topic. Ask that same professor why blacks have lower socioeconomic status in the West, and you'll hear a confident exposition on institutional racism. Smart people learn to just avoid the subject.

The diversity mantra implies class membership trumps individual character in determining moral standing. It should be no surprise that this belief has failed to improve the lot of those regarded as oppressed. It inverts Martin Luther King's call to judge people by the content of their character, and in the process creates a greater divide.